Medical weight loss

Losing weight is one of the top priorities for many especially during the New Year’s resolutions time. As the United States and the world fight an epidemic of overweight, obesity, and diabetes, some call diabesity, it is important to examine what truly causes weight gain.

What is medical weight loss and how can it help me?

Overweight and obesity

Medical weight loss, as opposed to surgical weight loss, involves non-surgical measures to help you reach your weight gains and to maintain it.

Before we look at the causes of weight gain and strategies to lose weight, let us look at some of the common things people search the internet. Here are some of the commonly searched questions on Google.

How do I help lose weight?

How can a woman lose weight fast?

How can I lose weight fast in 3 days?

How do you lose 10 pounds in a week?

What is an unhealthy rate of weight loss?

What is the best exercise for losing weight?

How much weight loss per week is healthy?

What are 3 weight management strategies?

How common is overweight and obesity in the US?

First, let us look at obesity rate among adults in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), obesity is common, serious, and costly.

What percent of US adults are obese?

The prevalence of obesity was 39.8% and affected about 93.3 million of US adults in 2015~2016, according to the CDC.

What medical conditions are linked to being overweight or obese?

Over 50 different medical conditions are related to being overweight or obese including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer that are some of the leading causes of preventable, premature death.

What is the annual cost of obesity in the United States?

The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was $147 billion in 2008 US dollars; the medical cost for people who have obesity was $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.

What truly causes obesity?

Obesity is a complex problem that has many causes. Let us look at what truly is causing the obesity, and diabetes epidemic. Although most people oversimplify this and say, it is “calories in, calories out” or “energy balance equation”, those oversimplifications rarely solve any problem and in fact can lead to “blame the victim” attitude.

Over the past several decades, there has been an overemphasis on low fat diets thinking that fatty foods make one fatty and therefore, low fat foods are a solution.

However, low fat food in practicality ended up being high glycemic and high starch leading to a new problem of increased sugar loading leading to over production of a very anabolic hormone called insulin. Overtime of getting over exposed to insulin, people develop what is called insulin resistance which not only leads to compensatory increase in basal insulin levels but also leads to increased hunger, overeating an bigger portions.

What are the contributing factors for obesity?

Obesity results from a combination of causes and contributing factors, including metabolic factors such as insulin resistance, lack of proper sleep, stress, medications, individual factors such as behavior and genetics.

What behavioral factors lead to weight gain?

Behaviors can include dietary patterns, physical activity, inactivity, medication use, and other exposures. Additional contributing factors in our society include the food and physical activity environment, education and skills, and food marketing and promotion.

Do genes have a role in obesity?

Genetic changes in human populations occur too slowly to be responsible for the obesity epidemic. Nevertheless, the variation in how people respond to the environment that promotes physical inactivity and intake of high-calorie foods suggests that genes do play a role in the development of obesity.

How could genes influence obesity?

Genes give the body instructions for responding to changes in its environment. Studies have identified variants in several genes that may contribute to obesity by increasing hunger and food intake.

Rarely, a clear pattern of inherited obesity within a family is caused by a specific variant of a single gene (monogenic obesity). Most obesity, however, probably results from complex interactions among multiple genes and environmental factors that remain poorly understood.

What about role of family history in obesity?

Health care practitioners routinely collect family health history to help identify people at high risk of obesity-related diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and some forms of cancer. Family health history reflects the effects of shared genetics and environment among close relatives. Families can’t change their genes but they can change the family environment to encourage healthy eating habits and physical activity. Those changes can improve the health of family members—and improve the family health history of the next generation.

Can certain medical conditions or medications cause weight gain?

Some illnesses may lead to obesity or weight gain. These may include Cushing’s disease, and polycystic ovary syndrome. Drugs such as steroids and some antidepressants may also cause weight gain. The science continues to emerge on the role of other factors in energy balance and weight gain such as chemical exposures and the role of the microbiome.

W8MD Weight Loss, Sleep & MedSpa Team

A health care provider can help you learn more about your health habits and history in order to tell you whether behaviors, illnesses, medications, and/or psychological factors are contributing to weight gain or making weight loss hard.

What are the health consequences of Obesity?

People who have obesity, compared to those with a normal or healthy weight, are at increased risk for many serious diseases and health conditions, including the following:

All-causes of death (mortality)

High blood pressure (Hypertension)

High LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, or high levels of triglycerides (Dyslipidemia)

Mental illness such as clinical depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders

Body pain and difficulty with physical functioning

What are the economic and societal consequences of obesity?

Obesity and its associated health problems have a significant economic impact on the U.S. health care system.

Medical costs associated with overweight and obesity may involve direct and indirect costs.

Direct medical costs may include preventive, diagnostic, and treatment services related to obesity

Indirect costs relate to morbidity and mortality costs including productivity.

Productivity measures include ‘absenteeism’ (costs due to employees being absent from work for obesity-related health reasons) and ‘presenteeism’ (decreased productivity of employees while at work) as well as premature mortality and disability.

W8MD’s medical weight loss programs can help!

If you are overweight or obese, and need help losing weight, W8MD can help. Accepting most insurances, with an evidence based practice, with many locations in the US with physicians and staff experienced and well trained, W8MD has helped thousands of patients and is ready to help you.